Digital video broadcasting, such as digital television (TV) broadcasting, has largely replaced analog video broadcasting. For example, in North America, a set of standards developed by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) is being used for digital television transmission over terrestrial, cable and satellite networks. In Europe and other countries, Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) has provided a suite of open standards for digital television. These standards may define the physical layer and the data link layer of a video content distribution system. The data may be transmitted in Moving Picture Expert Group (MPEG)-2 transport streams, International Standards Organization (ISO) Base Media (BM), MPEG-4 file formats and/or other transport streams or delivery formats.
Concurrent with the development of digital TV broadcasting, a new type of TV device, referred to as a “smart TV” and also sometimes referred to as a “connected TV” or a “hybrid TV”, has been developed. Smart TV devices can integrate Internet and Web 2.0 features into modern television sets and set-top boxes, as well as enhance the technological convergence between computers and these television sets/set-top boxes. Smart TV devices can have a higher focus on online interactive media, Internet TV, over-the-top content, as well as on-demand streaming media, and may have less focus on traditional broadcast media. The technology that enables smart TVs may be incorporated into television sets, but also into companion devices, such as set-top boxes, Blu-ray players, game consoles, hotel television systems and/or other companion devices. These devices may, for example, allow viewers to search and find videos, movies, photos and other content on the Web, on a local cable TV channel, on a satellite TV channel and/or stored on a local hard drive.
The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to claims in this application and any application claiming priority from this application, and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion of this section.